# Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?



## nothing to see here (Jul 18, 2013)

*Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

Something I've thought about a lot when looking through Pokémon size measurements according to the Pokédex... exactly what does the "height" measurement in the Pokédex measure?

For humanoid/bipedal Pokémon, the "height" actually measuring height makes sense.  For extremely long-bodied things like Arbok, Dragonair, and Gyarados, the "height" is probably intended to be their length instead (an 11-foot-long snake is a big snake but not absurdly so, while a snake that measures 11 feet in _height_ when it has about half of its body "standing up" off the ground like Arbok does in most of its poses would be pretty ridiculous.)

With quadrupeds though... it starts to get confusing.  When I was younger I always went with height for bipedal creatures and length for snake-like things and things that walk on four (or more) legs, but looking through some of them it doesn't always work very well.  Ponyta and Rapidash, for example.

What measurement of a Ponyta actually measures three feet and three inches?  Are they 3'03" long, and if so is that including the tail or not? Are they 3'03" tall from toes to head? Are they 3'03" at the shoulder?  There's so many different ways to measure a quadrupedal creature...

If you assume the measurements are always length for longer/quadrupedal creatures, then... Ponyta and Rapidash are _very_ small horses.  A 3'03" long Ponyta would be like some sort of miniature pony (and be far too small for teenagers or adults to even consider riding on), while a 5'07" Rapidash would still be so small in comparison to real horses that it'd count as a pony rather than a full-sized horse.

And regardless of which measurement is 3'03" on a Ponyta... would the same apply for every quadrupedal Pokémon, or only the horse/cow/etc.-like ones?  Horses in real life are typically measured by height at the shoulder (which would put Ponyta's average height in the upper range of possible heights for the real-life Shetland pony, which apparently max out at around 3'06"), and apparently dogs are measured that way too... but I've never heard of height-at-the-shoulder used as a measurement for, say, rats or skunks.  Or dragonflies.

Measuring dog-like Pokémon by height-at-the-shoulders runs into some weirdness, too.  I can see Entei being pretty big, but 6'11" at the shoulder would mean that an Entei would be just a couple inches short of _the largest horse that has ever lived._  Yeah, Entei should be big, but... that just seems to be pushing it a bit (how did those three get out of that tower without smashing some new holes in it if they're so huge they wouldn't be able to fit through doors...?)
And a Growlithe, described as a "puppy" Pokémon, would be approaching the size of an average Irish Wolfhound if its 2'04" (28 inches, compared to 30-35 for the wolfhound) is height at the shoulder.  Even if it is the "puppy" to a _very_ large dog (Arcanine), that still seems just too big.

====

So... how do you interpret the sizes in the Pokédex entries?  Any specific rules (this body type = height, this one = length, etc.), or more on an individual basis depending on the Pokémon?  Or do you just throw the official heights out the window and go with whatever first comes to mind, regardless of the size given in the Pokédex? XD

(And try to leave the anime out of this, if possible... that just makes things more confusing considering how inconsistent it is, even within itself.  If you do use anime sizes for comparison, just remember this: the last time I checked, Ash is drawn as being a little under 3 Pikachus tall, which would be something like 3'10"-3'11" at the tallest... all of the game protagonists that have their height given in-game are in the 4'07" to 4'11" range if I'm remembering right.)


----------



## Ether's Bane (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

My opinion:

Humanoid/Bipedal/Quadrupedal/Other - Height
Serpentine/Fish - Length


----------



## Superbird (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

Wailord weighs 800 pounds. res proved somewhere, I forget where, how impractical this is.

I think the designers are basically BSing height the same way they are weight.


----------



## 42aruaour (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*



Superbird said:


> Wailord weighs 800 pounds. res proved somewhere, I forget where, how impractical this is.
> 
> I think the designers are basically BSing height the same way they are weight.


From a TheJWittz video I saw, apparently Wailord is lighter than air. That is a little frightening, considering its the _Float Whale Pokémon_ and its pokedex entries state that it can go ~10,000 feet into the water. :angry:


----------



## Superbird (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

Ah, found it. In the midst of this post. 

Now please excuse me while I go save that link somewhere.


----------



## nothing to see here (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

...yeah, a lot (maybe even most) of the weights are complete nonsense.  (Wailord is one thing, but at least it's based on a blimp and can actually float off the ground, so it should at least be lighter than an actual whale of that size... but frickin' Onix, a 28-foot snake made of *rock*, only weighing 400-some pounds... even though a 28-foot snake made of normal snake stuff would probably be heavier than that? Now that's an impossible weight!)

At least part of the problem with weights is that the games literally can't display a weight higher than 5000-some pounds due to the way the weight data is programmed (at least in Ruby/Sapphire; I haven't done any ROM hacking with the later games so I don't know if this has changed since then.)  In the game data, no Pokémon can weigh much more than a couple tons, even though some of the really big ones (Onix, Steelix, Gyarados, Dialga, Giratina, etc.) probably should.  So it's kind of a programming/game-mechanic limitation (a lot like "only 4 moves" or TM moves only being passed down through breeding when that move is still a current TM in the game the breeding takes place.)

The height (/length/whatever) measurements, for the most part, seem more realistic than the weights at least.  There's some that just seem "huh??" but the rest can at least make sense if you interpret them a certain way (height at the shoulder for some, length for others, whether you include tails in the measurement or not, etc.)


----------



## I liek Squirtles (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

What if those 'mons evolved to weigh less to make moving easier? Like ducks having hollow bones, kind of.


----------



## 42aruaour (Jul 18, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

Interesting...
MY THOUGHTS ON THE POKEMON WORLD HAVE BEEN RUINED!!! Then the physics of the entire pokemon lands must be different... 
Nope. Just being random again I guess... But really. If they have nonsensical weights and have _evolved_ like that on purpose, then something about their physics is different. maybe the density of air there is 0.5 kg/m³ and water is 535 kg/m³? What if their density system is extremely off? Maybe that would explain it? and maybe human heights (which we usually use to compare) are off?

...


\ O.O /
I give up.


----------



## DarkAura (Jul 20, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*



FnrrfYgmSchnish said:


> (And try to leave the anime out of this, if possible... that just makes things more confusing considering how inconsistent it is, even within itself.  If you do use anime sizes for comparison, just remember this: the last time I checked, Ash is drawn as being a little under 3 Pikachus tall, which would be something like 3'10"-3'11" at the tallest... all of the game protagonists that have their height given in-game are in the 4'07" to 4'11" range if I'm remembering right.)


Aren't you contradicting yourself a bit? You're basing Pikachu's anime height on how tall it is in the games, when you just said that the anime and games are different from one another. So there's no definite height for Ash, if we're going by game and anime segregation.


----------



## I liek Squirtles (Jul 20, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

Or there's the always popular theory that since the Trainers record the info, they greatly exaggerate it.


----------



## AbsentNumeral (Aug 4, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*

And there's the other thing... are we supposed to believe that _every_ member of each species is the exact same height and weight? Are the numbers an average, or is it the measurements for the single member you capture? But if the latter theory is true, how does the Pokedex know?


----------



## nothing to see here (Aug 4, 2013)

*Re: Pokédex "height"... height, length, or what?*



> Aren't you contradicting yourself a bit? You're basing Pikachu's anime height on how tall it is in the games, when you just said that the anime and games are different from one another. So there's no definite height for Ash, if we're going by game and anime segregation.


Yeah, the height range is assuming Ash's Pikachu is 1'04" or at least somewhat close to that size.

Why would you assume that a Pikachu's size would be drastically different between the two just because the anime and games are separate?  The anime is (very loosely) based on the games.  They at least seem to be _trying_ to roughly match up with the games most of the time, though there are cases where it looks like they didn't even bother (Roselia coming up to a human's waist, for example) and others where sizes seem to be skewed to make certain species seem more or less impressive than their official size would make them.
It's not like the anime's sizes are total chaos, completely ignoring the game's size comparisons _all the time_, with stuff like human-sized Pikachus and foot-long Onixes showing up in every episode.  There are mistakes and inconsistencies, though, so it's unreliable when it comes to "how big is (insert Pokémon here)" kinds of questions.

As for Pikachu... you'd think the anime would at least get the size of its mascot Pokémon right, even if they're way off on a lot of other things.

Plus, if Pikachu's height was much different than the official (game) height for the species, then it would make things even weirder in the anime than they already are sometimes.  If Pikachu was much less than 1'04", then Ash--and by extension all of the humans--would be _ridiculously_ short.  If Pikachu was much bigger than 1'04", short people like Ash might have a normal height, but the normal adult-sized humans would all be freakishly tall.  There's no reason to believe that _all_ humans in the anime are so drastically different in size than normal humans, so changing Pikachu's size by more than a couple inches in either direction wouldn't really work.



> And there's the other thing... are we supposed to believe that every member of each species is the exact same height and weight? Are the numbers an average, or is it the measurements for the single member you capture? But if the latter theory is true, how does the Pokedex know?


They're probably averages (why would every member of a species be the exact same size? plus, there's guys in the games that want to see Shroomish, Magikarp, etc. and comment on some being bigger or smaller than normal, so there has to be some variance in size even if it's only by a couple inches up or down from the average.)  If that's how it works, then every Pokédex must come with the average heights of every known Pokémon programmed in already so it can automatically show the average even if the Pokémon you caught is a little bigger or smaller than average.

"The size of the one you caught" could work too, if you don't take the fact that the Pokédex sizes are always listed as the same in every game too literally (the chances of every main-character trainer always catching each species the exact same size as all of the others... not too high.)
If that's how it works, Pokédexes probably have the ability to scan Pokémon and record certain bits of data about them once they're caught.  Which makes sense considering that they doesn't display height/weight or types until after you've caught one.


----------

